A swage is frequently used to expand one tubular into another. In one case a liner is delivered into casing and a portion expanded against the casing to support the liner in the casing. Casing inside diameters have a range of internal diameters within the tolerances permitted by specifications of the American Petroleum Institute (API). If a fixed swage is used to expand the inner tubular or liner against an outer tubular or casing and the inside diameter of the casing is at the larger end of the allowable tolerance, then the anchor connection between the tubulars may not be sufficiently secure. On the other hand, if the internal diameter of the outer tubular is at the smaller end of the allowable tolerance, then a fixed swage sized for the middle of the tolerance range can over-expand the outer tubular possibly inducing stresses that could led to immediate or subsequent stress cracking and leakage at the connection between the tubulars. A given amount of force is required to push or pull a swage into the inner tubular to expand the inner tubular against the outer tubular. The amount of force is dependent on the amount of expansion of the inner tubular against the outer tubular. Usually, the greater the amount of expansion, the greater the amount of force is required to push or pull the swage. Therefore, a fixed swage that causes over-expansion of the tubular could require a force that is too high and not make a fixed swage to be economically or engineering feasible.
What is needed, and provided by the present invention, is a tool and method that takes into account the size of the inside diameter of the outer tubular to set up the swage to the appropriate dimension to snugly form the supporting connection between the tubulars while avoiding the risk of over-expansion of the outer tubular, at one extreme, and having the fixation contact force too low, at the other extreme. Swages that change dimension as between run in and swaging downhole have been used, as illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 6,012,523. These devices have only two operative positions for run in and for swaging. The present invention is adjustable to a variety of diameters for swaging. Moreover, the actual diameter of swaging is determined by the actual sensed internal diameter of the outer tubular against which the inner tubular is to be expanded. These advantages and others of the present invention will be more readily appreciated by those skilled in the art from a review of the description of the preferred embodiment and the claims, which appear below.